Brothers in all but blood
by Kheyra Amidala Skywalker
Summary: In Mustafar's lava hills, Obi-Wan knows that to strike Anakin down will burn his own heart to ash, but he is willing to do what he must. Or so he believes. When he finds out that he is unable to fight Anakin, he turns off his lightsaber and chooses a much more deadly weapon: words. With unexpected consequences. SEQUEL UP! "Blood of my blood."


**_Please don't sue me! Star Wars belongs to Lucas Film and to Disney Company. I'm only borrowing their characters nonprofit for a while._**

**_The first paragraphs (italics) have been copied from the movie and novelization of Revenge of the Sith, written by Matthew Stover. If any of you have still not read it, what you're waiting for? Go and get it now! It's worth the price. The best Star Wars novel ever!_**

**_For the rest of you, here is the story. I hope you enjoy it!_**

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I've uploaded the story again after the **wonderful job that my beta did** reviewing and correcting all the mistakes. I don't know how to thank her properly for her dedication. I still can try, though: **Roque Amadi, thank you, thank you, thank you very much**. You have been my first beta, and since english is not my first languaje and I'm always trying to improve, I'm more greatful for your help than I can express. I only hope we will be working together toward the sequel of this fic soon. Thank you again.

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**Brothers in all but blood.**

_In the Force, Anakin burned like a fusion torch:_

_"You turned her against me!"_

_Obi-Wan looked at the best friend he had ever had._

_"You did that yourself."_

_"You will not take her from me!"_

"_Your anger and your lust for power have already done that." Obi-Wan said sadly. "You have allowed this Dark Lord to twist your mind, until now...Until now, you have become the very thing you swore to destroy. "_

_"Don't lecture me, Obi-Wan. I see through the lies of the Jedi. I do not fear the Dark Side as you do!" Anakin raised his eyes with pride. "I have brought peace, freedom, justice and security to my new Empire."_

_"Your new Empire?"_

_"Don't make me kill you."_

_"Anakin, my allegiance is to the Republic, to democracy!" Obi-Wan protested. But it was already too late; Anakin was already too far away for him to reach._

_"If you're not with me, then you are my enemy." His voice was as cold as ice._

_Obi-Wan sighed._

"_Only a Sith deal in absolutes." He brought out his own lighstaber and angled it before him. "I will do what I must."_

_"You will try," Anakin said, and leapt._

Obi-wan knew what his duty was. He was a Jedi first of all and that title came with a price, a high responsibility. When he became a Jedi Knight so many years ago, he swore to the council and to himself that his first thought would always be for the good of the galaxy, even before any thought for his own wellbeing.

Sith were evil. They were selfish, cruel, and vile creatures, only able to worry about themselves and their hunger for power. Sith represented every little thing Obi-Wan hated, and he had sworn oppose them.

Jedi fight the Sith, Sith kill the Jedi. It was the natural order of things.

So Obi-Wan thought he could do it. After watching the temple's holograms, after seeing with his own eyes as Anakin turned against Padme and hurt her without worrying about the child of both of them that she was carrying, Obi-Wan gave himself up to the hopeless truth. Anakin _—_his old padawan, the child he raised up, his dearest friend and his brother by choice_—_ was dead.

What was left in his body was nothing but a twisted, wicked and evil thing, and an insult to his memory. Killing him was the most merciful thing he could do, for the galaxy and for Anakin himself. For this reason Obi-Wan raised his weapon ready for the battle.

Because he thought he could do it.

He was wrong.

The lightsabers clashed against each other once, and then again; blue against blue, brother against brother. And that was all. That was too much already.

"No." Obi-Wan shook his head. "No. I can't do this. Anakin, please! Don't force me to do this. I won't!" He refused with determination, and in an extremely dangerous movement he turned off his lightsaber.

Anakin narrowed his eyes, distrusting.

"You should never have dropped your defenses, Master. This is not time for one of your tricks. I won't fall for it like Ventress did."

"This is not a trick, Anakin. I wish it were, but it's not. The truth is I can't kill you, because I love you too much."

Instead of softening to Anakin, these last words seemed to increase his anger. The features of his face were twisted with an indescribable rage and madness.

"Liar!"

"Anakin—"

"Liar!" He repeated. His presence in the dark side of the Force rumbled around him as he began to lose his control over his feelings. "You are a Jedi. You cannot talk about love. None of you know anything about love. There's no emotion, only peace; remember that, master? Well, I think you were successful finally. The Jedi temple was certainly in peace the last time I checked it."

Obi-Wan closed his eyes painfully. If Anakin was trying to hurt him, he had found a way. He had lost everything what he cared about in that temple; but far from undermining his determination, it was precisely because of that that he couldn't give up now.

"I know it should be so. But I can't lie to myself any longer. I have failed as a Jedi just as much as I have failed to you. I've lost my home, my friends, and my family… because of you. But I can't lose you too, Anakin. I can't believe you are gone forever."

"I don't believe you. You've never cared about me. Even from the beginning, I know you never wanted me to become a Jedi, nor your apprentice. I could feel it even as a child. You were always jealous of me, of my power!"

"That's not true." He said. But it was going to be difficult convincing Anakin of that fact.

Obi-Wan sighed deeply.

He had always known that the beginning of the relationship was a long way from perfect. He also knew it had been mostly his fault. Anakin was just a boy back then, a boy who had lost his mather, his home and the whole world he knew at the same time. A boy who needed a kind of warmth that Obi-Wan didn't know how to give him.

The remorse of those tumultuous beginnings of their relationship had pursued Obi-Wan for a long time, and there had been a lot of moments when he was tempted to apologize to Anakin and explaining himself.

But he never did.

He had been too cowardly to talk so he opted to remain silent, excusing himself with the thought that it made no sense to reopen old wounds, thinking that Anakin did know he was sorry even if Obi-Wan had never said it to him with words. Now such cowardice was rightfully being used against him.

"You were right about one thing. I felt jealous of you, but not for the reasons that you would think," he ruefully acknowledged. "I'm a Jedi, but I'm a long way from a perfect one, Anakin. And I was very young when I became your master. Qui-Gon Jinn just died in front of me. He had been my master for over fifteen years at that time, and he also was the closest thing to a father that I ever knew."

"Can you imagine how I felt back then?" Obi-Wan asked, willing to share those feelings with his heart in hand. "Qui-Gon never wanted me as his padawan, not really. I had to spend weeks pleading him when I was a youngling. I was driven out of the temple and sent to agricultural fields because he wouldn't take me. I had to prove myself worthy to him over and over again and yet he didn't accept me until I almost died. Then suddenly you were there, and he wanted to replace me with you the very second you met each other; as if all that we had shared meant nothing. He threw me out without a thought; he was going to become your master even with the disapproval of the council. Even his last words when he was dying were for you!"

"So yes, I felt jealous of you, even knowing the whole situation was not your fault because you were only a child. And I'm so sorry for that, Anakin. I wanted to apologize to you more times than I can count, but I never did. And now it's too late," he concluded regretful.

If Obi-Wan thought he was going to feel better after confessing the truth he had hidden for years, he was wrong. At least it seemed Anakin had been listening to him, truly listening. But the features of his face didn't reveal any of his emotions.

"You never told me this story before," his old padawan said finally, after several moment of silence.

The Jedi shook his head sorrowfully.

"I didn't. Perhaps I should have. It is always hard for me to talk about these kinds of feelings, because as a Jedi I'm not supposed to feel attachment. But unfortunately I do." Obi-Wan stopped to talking for a second and looked up to Anakin, forcing their eyes to find each other. He needed his old friend to hear and believe his next words, the truest and most important ones that Obi-Wan would say in his whole life.

"I've raised you up, Anakin. I have seen you grow up and to go from child to teenager, then later becoming a man who I couldn't be prouder of. And somewhere on the road I came to love you in a way I thought I couldn't. You are my brother in all but blood. I know you better that I do anyone else. I know you own the most generous, bold and warm heart of the galaxy, because I've seen it. And it is because all of that, that I refuse to believe you are lost forever. I just cannot!

"So please..." Obi-Wan continued. "Please Anakin, I beg you. Tell me I'm not wrong. I know it's still not too late."

The next pause lasted for an eternity:

"I can't."

It was not the answer that Obi-Wan was expecting.

The Jedi felt as his heart was smashed a little more than it already was. Yet, he noticed, Anakin's voice was weak, broken and hopeless, not strong and proud as it had been before. Looking at his face Obi-Wan discovered a lonely tear falling from his eye.

That must mean something. He couldn't give up so soon.

"Yes." Obi-Wan replied. "Yes, you can! You have made terrible mistakes, but so have I. So has everyone. The Jedi have paid for their own already. Now you can either be a man and face them, helping to fix them, or just run away from them forever. It is up to you, Anakin; because no one else will make the decision for you."

Anakin shook his head, as if he wanted shake off the ghost of Obi-Wan's words.

"No, you don't understand! The dark side makes me more powerful than you could even suspect. Go away, Obi-Wan. I won't fight you, but I won't give up my power either."

"Your power? ... At what price did you gain your power, Anakin? Look around you, look what you did, look at Padme." Obi-Wan stepped back and pointed to the unconscious figure on the ground. "You love this woman. You have loved her since you were nine years old. And you just attacked her for no reason!"

Mentioning Padme's name was a mistake. Obi-Wan saw the change in his eyes as clearly as he felt it in the Force.

"Shut up!" Anakin exclaimed with anger. "You have no right to talk. It was all her fault! She betrayed me! You turned her against me!"

"No, Anakin." Obi-Wan shook with his head gloomily. "Truly she never did. She refused to betray you even after I told her everything that you had done, even killing the younglings. It wasn't her who helped me to find you."

"What? ... No. That's not possible."

"It is." The Jedi affirmed, regretting he didn't make that point clear earlier. Every piece of rage and hate seemed to have left Anakin's body, replaced with confusion and fear of what had turned out to be truth.

Obi-Wan explained himself.

"She refused to tell me where you were. But I knew after I'd spoken to her she would go to find you, so I hid inside her ship. And I was right. She brought me to you, but she never meant to."

"No…" Anakin repeated with pain. "No. That's not possible."

If that was the truth, it meant he had just hurt Padme without reason, just as Obi-Wan had said. He didn't want to believe it, he didn't want to face the blame for the severity of his actions. At the same time, he could not deny it. He was able to sense in the Force the sincerity of Obi-Wan's words. Guilt crashed against him with strength of a meteorite.

"I'm sorry…"

Obi-Wan didn't know if the apology was to him, to Padme, or only to Anakin himself. He supposed it was a little for everyone.

"It's not too late." The Jedi said again, believing it possible. "Your soul is worth more than any kind of unlimited power. And if your own wellbeing is not enough, then think about Padme, about the child she is carrying. That baby is going to need a father, Anakin. He's going to need you. The real you! Not this murderer of younglings who you have turned into."

Anakin looked genuinely dismayed by the truth of his words. His body was trembling as if he were in pain. But he still wouldn't give up.

"I can't," his old apprentice refused for the third time. "I can't do as you ask me to. You don't understand, Obi-Wan. I need this power! It is the only way to save her!"

"Save her?" Obi-Wan blinked with confusion. This was a new argument that he didn't understand yet. "Do you mean Padme?"

Anakin didn't even bother to answer him.

"I see her dying." He said instead. "I see her dying all time, from weeks ago. I hear her screaming for help, and she's yelling my name. Yet I can do nothing to help her. Then I awake."

"Anakin," Obi-Wan started to say carefully. "You cannot take your dreams too literally. You're scared of losing her, so your fear became…"

"No!" Anakin interrupted him suddenly. "Don't you dare! Don't you dare to say they're only dreams. They never are!"

"Anakin…"

"No!" He refused to listen. The anger that seemed almost consumed minutes ago was now burning with intensity. "They never were! Do you remember my mother, Obi-Wan? Do you remember how she died? Just like I knew it would happen, like I'd been seeing it for months. But you didn't want to believe me. You didn't believe me and you forbade me going to save her. When I finally did, it was too late and she died in my arms. It was your fault! She died because of you!"

Obi-Wan closed his eyes with regret in the face of such accusations. Anakin had a right to reproach him this time.

The guilt for Smi's death had pursued him from the very first time he heard about it. Even so, he had never truly come to realize the deep pain it meant for Anakin, just like he never could understand the unconditional love and the need that his padawan felt for his mother. That kind of familiar attachment was just foreign to him.

"I will not let it happen this time!" Anakin exclaimed. "I can't! You don't know what it's been like all these weeks. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't eat, I couldn't take a minute of rest without hearing her screams inside my head." Something had broken inside the young Sith. Every private and painful emotion, those which had tormented him these last weeks, was finally being expressed with words, like an erupting volcano that cannot be content. "Every time I closed my eyes and I saw her face twisting in pain. It was driving me crazy!"

"Why did you not tell me?" the Jedi asked Anakin.

_How could all this happen so near to me without me noticing? _He asked himself sorrowfully.

"How could I have?" his old apprentice answered." You weren't there, Obi-Wan. I asked you to take me with you to hunt down Griveous and you didn't. You left me alone with the Council, with him!"

"And he agreed to help you when you asked him to…"

"No." Anakin shook his head. "No, I didn't. I didn't have to. He knew already. He'd always known."

In his mind, Obi-Wan was able of starting to understand what had happened.

"So that's how he did it. You gave up everything just for his promise of saving her." There was no trial in the Jedi's voice, only a deep sadness.

It seemed to infuriate Anakin though.

"What other option did I have? I didn't want any of this. I did ask Yoda for his help, but he wouldn't say anything that wasn't useless! And the Council hated me! If only they had named me a master, then I would've been able to find a solution in the unleashed holocrons. But they didn't! Palpatine was the only one who offered me a chance."

"In exchange for becoming his apprentice…"

Anakin lowered his head ruefully.

"Yes."

"And you accepted."

"I… I did not in the beginning." He excused himself without noticing. "When I found out who he really was, it was because he told me about the dark side. He said he had powers enough to save people from death. In that moment it was when I realized he was the Lord of the Sith we were looking for, but he didn't try to kill me. He let me out, and I informed the Council of this truth."

"I see…" Obi-Wan pronounced slowly.

"When I came back to his office, he was screaming for my help. Master Windu had defeated him and was about to kill him. I begged him to spare his life, to make him a prisoner... but he didn't listen." Anakin kept in silence for some seconds, unable to finish the story. "He was my only chance for saving Padme." He concluded. "I could not let him die!"

So that was the complete story. The Jedi sighed deeply.

It wasn't like Obi-Wan had imagined. He had been sure that his lust for power was what had turned Anakin to the dark side, but at the end it had been his fear. Just like Yoda predicted so many years ago, when he and the little Anakin met each other.

"_Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger_._ Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering…"_

He was right. Obi-Wan could almost hear the words in his ears.

Anakin loved intensely and he had never learned to remove his feelings. Obi-Wan didn't know how to teach him to do it. He tried just like he had been taught when he was a padawan himself. However that way was never going to work for Anakin; he was too old already when he started his training. And instead of teaching him to deal with his emotions, to deal with the love that Obi-Wan always knew Anakin felt for Padme and his mother, he chose not to see them.

Against his own wisdom Obi-Wan had followed council's instructions with respect to Anakin and he had used him as a political tool to get closer to the Chancellor. From the beginning he had known it was a big mistake, Anakin was loyal to people not to principles —_the most loyal person he had ever met_. Yet he had yielded to their will, and he had utilized their relationship to command him to betray and spy on Palpatine.

How Palpatine must have laughed at him!

Obi-Wan was brave enough to admit that all these actions had done nothing but help the Sith Lord's goals. He and he alone had been responsible for pushing Anakin away, leaving him with no one to turn to, no one to trust except for Palpatine.

Nevertheless, ultimately, it had been Anakin who chose to fall; and only Anakin could embrace the redemption.

"I don't think you get what you want." Obi-Wan said simply.

Anakin narrowed his eyes suspiciously.

"What do you mean?"

"The dark side is powerful, I won't deny that; it's powerful, easy and fast, but it is also a trap for itself. And all its powers are dark."

"I don't think so." Anakin replied trustfully, with a smirk. "That's only what the Jedi have told you for decades, and you believe them without a thought, as always. But I'm not a Jedi anymore, master. I'm over it."

"Then how do you explain what you did to Padme? Yes, I know you thought she had betrayed you." Obi-Wan added quickly before Anakin had time to protest. "But you didn't even take time enough to question her. You just tried to throttle her! She's a pregnant woman. You could have killed her and the baby so easily! Even by accident…"

Anakin shook his head and he looked like he was suffering physical pain. Obi-Wan watched with hope as his words started to have a real effect on Anakin.

"Look at her, Anakin!" he stepped aside and showed the unconscious, fragile and pregnant woman on the ground. "The Anakin that I know, he would have died before allowing anything happen to Padme. He would have killed himself before he hurt her in any way. The Anakin that I know, he was a hero. He saved people, he didn't massacre them. What you did in the temple… even the youngest ones, even the babies…"

Obi-Wan could not continue. Tears threatened to fall from his eyes and he had to keep them down. He knew that if he broke down to mourn now, he wouldn't be able to stop for a long time.

"They were Jedi too." It was the weak excuse of Anakin. "It was an evil necessity. It was the only way…"

"There is always _another_ way. You did not want to find it, just like I always closed my eyes to the truth. It wasn't Palpatine only. He would have not been enough. The truth is that you hate the Jedi; a long time before any of this started, you already hated us."

Anakin couldn't reply because he ignored how much truth there was in that sentence. Once upon a time he had believed Jedi were like invincible, generous, warm and disinterested gods. When Qui-Gon had freed him and offered for him to come on their spacecraft and become a Jedi, that ideal image about the order had got stronger.

Then they had arrived on Coruscant and the Council's rejection, fear and dislike toward him without reason, broke the kid's illusion in a sigh.

"I didn't hate you." It was all Anakin could say without lying. "I _don't_ hate you." He added a half second later, surprising himself by the truth of that sentence.

"Maybe not." Obi-Wan agreed. "But either with reason or without it, you did feel rancor forward me, forward us all, and Palpatine didn't think twice before to use it."

Anakin shook his head and narrowed his eyes. Obi-Wan's reasoning was awaking doubts in his mind that because of his desperation he hadn't stopped to think about before. He didn't like it. He tried to embrace the hate and the anger that had made him powerful, but he found out it was hard to get it, much more difficult than it had been the first time.

The Dark Side had made his weariness and his fear disappear like a miracle, and Anakin had thought they were vanished forever. However, they were never really gone. They had been hiding under a slight costume of power and invincibility. Now those emotions were coming back to him as strong as or maybe stronger than before, and he didn't know what he should do.

The threat of Padme's death was still very alive. But if the dark side were not the way, that left him without options.

"I know we've… _I_, have failed you." Obi-Wan pointed out. "But Palpatine is not better than us. He and his hunger for power created a civil war, and destroyed billions of innocent lives around the galaxy without remorse. He wanted to be your friend and your confidant since you were a kid just for this: to kill every little piece of goodness in you, and turn you into his fool."

The worst thing of all was that Anakin couldn't deny his words. Obi-Wan paused for a second and then, looking at Anakin's blue eyes – they were blue again – he added after a sudden revelation so clear that it must come from the Force itself.

"What if your dreams of Padme dying are not a vision of the future? What if they are a warning?"

"What?" Anakin blinked confused. "What do you mean?"

"Just think about it for a second, Anakin," he asked with calm, without accusation in his voice. "You have been feeding of the dark side's powers just for a couple of days, and you have already injured her. What if that is what the force is trying to tell you?"

"No." Anakin shook his head, he could not even consider that option. "No! It cannot be!"

Obi-Wan ignored his denial and continued speaking.

"If that's so, then surrendering yourself to the dark side and Palpatine, trying to save her, you have sealed her destiny yourself. Even if you would have never attacked her, she loves you. How do you think she could survive after you have changed? What you have done? That knowledge would've killed her, one way or another."

Silence.

More silence.

Anakin could not answer. He was broken. He wished to refuse Obi-Wan's words more than anything else in the whole galaxy, but he couldn't. He knew they were the truth. He could sense it so clearly in the Force now, that it was almost a miracle that he had been unable to feel it before.

_Force_!

It wasn't only that truth that had opened for him. All his actions, all his thought, all the pain and the guilt that the dark side had been hiding from him, it beat Anakin with the strength of a tornado. He closed his eyes.

_What have I done_?

Hundreds of images crossed his mind: master Windu's death, the fire of the temple, Palpatine's persuasive speech, his vow to him and to the dark side, the younglings… The younglings! He had killed them all without a thought of mercy, without doubt, without compassion.

_Everything for nothing_.

It was never his duty to save Padme; he was the only one who put her in danger. That thought was painfully insupportable.

He could not stand the agony, the enormous guilt that came with the truth. Finally Anakin was breaking into pieces, a slow process which had started weeks ago with the first nightmares. Or maybe not. Maybe it started on Tatooine's sand with the death of his mother, or on Geonosis where after Dooku gave the order to kill hundreds of Jedi, he had failed to defeat him and lost his arm; or maybe it started in Jabiim when it was him who was responsible for a similar number of deaths, and continued in every other bloody battlefield where this war had driven him.

Wherever it did start, now it was too late.

The words of warning of Master Yoda resounded in Anakin's ears.

_If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny._

"I'm sorry." He felt on his knees. "I'm so sorry, master."

Anakin was crying! Tears escaped his eyes and slid down by his cheeks and, for first time, Obi-Wan was able to sense his sincere regret in the Force.

The Jedi thought that perhaps he had not the right to feel that much relieved, as much deeply happy after all the other events, but he could not help it. At least he had been able to do something right for once. At least his brother wasn't gone forever. He had saved him.

"It's okay, Anakin. It's not too late."

His old padawan shook his head. On his knees and with his shoulders hunched, he looked more similar than ever to the little kid that Obi-Wan had brought up.

"The things that I've done…" His voice was weak and breathy. "I don't know if I can…"

"You can help to fix it all now!" Obi-Wan exclaimed with faith. "Crying won't be useful for anyone, but if you are really penitent, then you must come with me, with Padme. There's still one chance for us, for the republic! Master Yoda has gone to fight Palpatine and—"

"He has lost." Anakin interrupted him.

Obi-Wan stared at him, shocked.

"What?"

Anakin didn't answer, and he wasn't looking at him any longer. He had his eyes lost in the burned horizon, without watching anything concrete, pensive. His fists closed after a while and a few wrinkles appeared around his eyes. Obi-Wan did not dare to suppose what he had to be thinking, but whatever it was, it had to be painful.

When Anakin finally moved, he didn't address Obi-Wan. He walked to Padme. He knelt beside her, and the back of his hand stroked her face with an indescribable tenderness and delicacy.

He whispered a few words to her ear which Obi-Wan could make out, but he would not go near them. The scene in front of him was so intimate that he felt like an outsider even from his present distance. Even without understanding what was going on, there was something about that scene that tore his heart.

Finally Anakin rose to his feet, walked a few steps away from her, and raised his eyes to Obi-Wan with resolution.

"I'm sorry, Master; for everything. I'm sorry I've failed you and for everything that I've done." Anakin expressed with regret and real pain. He closed his eyes, clenched his fists and held down his breath for a few seconds. Only then, he added the final sentence. "Tell Padme I am so sorry too, please."

Obi-Wan, who had listened to his apologies with calm and acceptance, frowned now.

"You can tell her yourself when she wakes up," he suggested carefully.

"I can't..."

"Anakin—"

"I can't go with you." The young man declared with a broken voice but full of decision. "It's already too late for me, master. Everything I've done..." he shook his head. "I'm sorry."

All Obi-Wan's hopes crumbled in an instant.

He could not understand how the whole thing came to end in this way. He had seen repentance in Anakin's eyes; he had sensed his pain, his regret... He still could feel it.

It should mean something.

"Anakin, please! Don't do that to me, to us. Don't give up so easily. You are my brother! I need to save you!"

His friend's blue eyes stared him.

"You have, already."

It was his cryptic answer.

It was the only answer that Obi-Wan was ever going to get. He would have to live with that brief sentence the rest of his whole life; and toward it, toward its meaning, all his hopes would turn for comfort in the darkest moments.

Of course, Obi-Wan didn't know that yet. He could not even suspect.

"Anakin—"

"You must go." He interrupted. "Go now and take her with you."

"Anakin, I can't…"

"Yes, you can. I'm trusting you with her life, Obi-Wan. I see his plan now. I can't allow him to get his hands on my wife, much less my child; and I'm still not powerful enough to kill him. I need time!"

Obi-Wan refused to budge yet.

"Maybe you are not, but I can help. We can try to defeat Palpatine together, he won't—"

"He'd kill us both! He'd kill us and then who would be there to protect Padme?" Anakin didn't wait for an answer. "No, master. I started this, and I must to finish it. But I need to know they are saved, first. Promise me you'll take care of them. Promise me you won't let her die!"

The decision was unwavering in his eyes. Obi-Wan looked at his Padawan for a few moments, and he realized that there was nothing he could do or say to change his mind. He had made a decision, a hard decision and terribly painful one. And he would follow it to the end.

For a few seconds Obi-Wan felt deeply proud of the young man in front of him. Despite all their mistakes, despite how much he loved her, he was willing to give her up to keep her safe. Anakin had finally learned to overcome his feelings.

Now Obi-Wan understood what he must to do, and he was overcome by sadness.

"I promise you." He solemnly swore.

Anakin nodded.

"Then, take her now and go away, far away." He warned seriously. "Hide where no one can find you, and never come back for me."

New tears slid down his cheeks. He came back to Padmé, and his fingers petted again her beautiful face, while his lips touched hers in a last kiss filled with love and apology for a final time. Then he stood up and walked away.

Anakin did not dare look back as Obi-Wan took Anakin's wife in his arms gently, and started up the ramp of the ship.

It was the hardest road that Obi-Wan would walk ever, and yet it wasn't long enough.

Threepio and Artoo were waiting for them at the top of the ramp. The Jedi knew that when the door was locked, he would be leaving his friend alone in the dark. He understood it was the right thing to do, their only chance, and he ignored any concern whether Anakin would be strong enough to resist the temptation, powerful enough to defeat the Emperor. Obi-Wan didn't know if he would see his friend ever again, or if this was a goodbye forever.

Whatever was the final result, he must say something else before leaving. He needed to say goodbye.

"Anakin—" he started, stopping his steps a meter away from the gate. Nevertheless, finding the right words was a little harder than Obi-Wan had planned.

His disciple resolved his conflict, turning his body to Obi-Wan for the first time since he had begun to draw away. His eyes were bathed with tears, but there wasn't jealousy in them, neither anger nor rage, only sadness.

"Thank you, Obi-wan. Thank for always keeping your faith in me. It was more than I deserve. I will never forget it."

Obi-Wan nodded with his head and, at the end, he understood there was only one thing that he could say.

"May the force always be with you, my brother."

Then Obi-Wan advanced a few steps and the gate to the ship closed behind him, taking him, Padme and their baby — all the beings Anakin ever loved— far away from his life forever.

Anakin didn't move away. He didn't move away when the spacecraft turned on its engines, he didn't when it started to lift off the ground, neither when the shadow of the ship began to merge with the horizon. He stood immobile, his eyes on the two points of light which blinked every second further from him.

He knew he had chosen the right thing; the only thing that he could do. Palpatine wanted him to be his: his fool, his right hand, his Sith Lord apprentice. If Anakin had run away with Padme and their baby, the Emperor's shadow would have chased them until the end.

It would have never been possible for them to build a home for their child, helping him or her to grow up and living their life peacefully as a family. Sooner or later Palpatine would have reached them and then there would have been no pardon for them.

By letting them go, Anakin had given them their best chance to survive. Away from him, Padme would be able to create a good life for their child without threats hanging over them. A child who would never meet his father.

Will he or she think about him ever?

Perhaps Padme would talk to the baby about him, about his father, when he or she grew up. If her heart was kindly enough to forgive him, his child would grow up with fairy stories about his heroic father. Obi-Wan could help telling a few stories too, and he would protect them with his life. He had promised it.

Anakin's only wish was that his baby would never find out about his fall, about the terrible mistakes he had carried out. He didn't know how to keep living if that were otherwise.

The young husband, father and friend blinked when the ship was introduced into the atmosphere going towards space, waking up from his thoughts. Just in time. As if somehow the Force were on his side.

He was going to need it. Palpatine's presence was getting closer and closer. He was going to land on the planet within a few minutes, and Anakin needed to think of a credible lie for him.

Soon, he would be tested by the Sith Lord. He would need to immerse himself in the dark side and to commit awful crimes without hesitation to win time until he became strong enough to kill him. But the Dark Side was powerful and persuasive, and not even Anakin himself could say for sure if he would be able to resist its call.

He could easily lose his soul on the way that he had marked to reach his goal.

At that time, however, Anakin couldn't care less. He didn't feel fear or anxiety. He wasn't worried about himself, just like Palpatine was out of his mind. He was only able to watch as the ship's lights were lost into deep space. He could only feel as the presence of his beloved wife and his dearest friend vanished forever into the distance, as the spacecraft made the jump to light speed taking with it everything he cared about.

Then, suddenly, Anakin was alone. And in the Force — his oldest and most faithful ally — nothing left but a huge vacuum.

_This is the price of his mistakes, and Anakin has not any another option than living with it forever._

* * *

I hope you enjoyed reading. English is not my first language, and after spending a few months in London, this is my first real try to write something in english. I know it must be full of mistakes, and I just hope you could understand and enjoy a little.

I just was reading ROTS for hundredth time, and I needed to write this! I love that book, and the Anakin and Obi-Wan destiny is so tragic and unfair... They loved and cared for each other so much, but they also had several issues which they never talk about, and I think that is one of the reasson Palpatine did use to turn Anakin to the Dark Side.

I don't like the movie that very much though. I love Ewan McGregor's acting, and I think Hayden didn't do it as bad as many people say in Mustafar's scenes. Just like Natalie Portman or probably better. When he is already burning in the lava, I can name the different emotions that are crossing his mind in every second without a word.

The main problem was Lucas gave them a very idiot dialogues to work with the most of time, ones that no even the own actors couldn't believe (much less us, the viewers), and he made Anakin to look as a fool with pretensions of grandeur. Which he wasn't. Just read what he said in the book (Anakin talking with Padme in Mustafar):

_"Nothing will happen. Nothing can happen. Let Palpatine call himself Emperor. Let him. He can do the dirty work, all the messy, brutal oppression it'll take to unite the galaxy forever unite it against him. He'll make himself into the most hated man in history. And when the time is right, we'll throw him down." _This's not the fool's reflection blinded in his proud._  
_

Moving on, about this fanfic, I'm thinking to write a sequel. It was a very open final, so anyone can imagine what happen the next, but I really like the idea of writting a sequel fifteen or sixteen years later answering some question (Did Padme survive? Where did she and Obi-Wan go? Did Leia and Luke grow up together? What happend to Anakin?). It is up to you, my good reader! **If you think it is a good idea and that my level of english is not too awful, please let me know!**

In the same topic, before writing any sequel **I would wish to find a beta** for this fic and the next one. I really need to improve my english written, and if any of you could mark my mistakes, at least the most important and the most repeated ones, I'll be really, really greatful to you.

And this is all. It only left to hope Disney will not ruin my all-time favourite saga, that Obi-Wan (and Ewan) will get his own movie, and Vader will win the final match in This Is Maddnes. **Everyone vote for Vader, please!** This's a Sith Lord command!

And if you want to leave a review of this story for me, then you will be doing this litlle star wars friki a very, very happy girl.

**_May the force be with you all!_**

**_Kheyra Amidala Skywalker_**


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